Converting An Old AT&T Microwave Relay Site Into a Datacenter

2014 Brought more data center upgrades! We added an additional power feed, generator, UPS and two air conditioners. We finished out the year by adding a redundant fiber optic provider and entry in to the building!

Hi all – If you have any interest in leasing space on our tower I would like to talk to you! We have gigabit fiber optic connectivity to FWR Communications in the 511 building downtown Minneapolis. From there you can cross connect to any of a huge number of providers, or maybe you are already located there? At any rate, we have a perfect 4G/LTE site ready to go. We have plenty of room in our building for equipment colo, or if you wish to locate a shelter outdoors, there is plenty of room for multiples of those too! UPS Backup, generator backup – it’s all there! Please contact me through our RevNetData.com contact page for more information – Thanks, Dave.

Thanks to US Cable we have live Fiber optic connectivity! Here are some pics of the fiber installation. I let Keith put the rest in! Didn’t want to break any fibers. Conduit to ladder rack transition. CWDM Mux / Demux – Looks like 5 potential connections crammed in to 1 pair of fiber. Completed install [...]

After ten years – the generator started! Seems to be in great shape, didn’t have to crank long before it fired up! Written on the door to the generator room is a caution about wearing hearing protection, I know why. The only things that were really needed to make it work were: Connect 24v to [...]

Well, where to start? All of the AT&T racks are torn down, and 1400Lbs of them are cut up and recycled. Still more to go but we ran out of steam and gas… acetylene gas. All that to make room for server cabinets! Now I’ll post some pictures… running out of words… getting worn out! [...]

There are a bunch of things online about AT&T’s long lines network. This is what the tower / datacenter was a part of. Here are a list of interesting things that I have found: Midwest Network Map - Interesting note – the Cambridge relay site isn’t on the map! History on AT&T’s Website The Long Lines [...]

Well, it’s down to these three… Liebert NPower: APC Silcon: MGE Galaxy 3000 I think that it might end up being the MGE. We will see. The Liebert NPower is great… it’s a Liebert after all… but it’s expensive… it’s a Liebert after all. The APC Silcon doesn’t use double conversion like almost every other large [...]

Thanks to some expertise from Josh, we SAFELY removed a bunch of heavy cabinets. 2 DC rectifiers and the distribution panel to be exact. I find it really amazing how everything was put together (very over the top) like for instance a wire tray between the power panel and the rectifiers. They couldn’t have just [...]